Gravitoturbulent dynamo in global simulations of gaseous disks

¹ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
e-mail: william.bethune@uni-tuebingen.de
² DAMTP, University of Cambridge, CMS, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, UK

Received: 28 January 2022
Accepted: 10 June 2022

Abstract

Context. The turbulence driven by gravitational instabilities (GIs) can amplify magnetic fields in massive gaseous disks. This GI dynamo may appear in young circumstellar disks, whose weak ionization challenges other amplification routes, as well as in active galactic nuclei. Although regarded as a large-scale dynamo, only local simulations have so far described its kinematic regime.

Aims. We study the GI dynamo in global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models of accretion disks, focusing on its kinematic phase.

Methods. We perform resistive MHD simulations with the PLUTO code for different radiative cooling times and electrical resistivities. A weak magnetic field seeds the dynamo, and we adopt mean-field and heuristic models to capture its essence.

Results. We recover the same induction process leading to magnetic field amplification as previously identified in local simulations. The dynamo is, however, global in nature, connecting distant annuli of the disk via a large-scale dynamo mode of a fixed growth rate. This large-scale amplification can be described by a mean-field model that does not rely on conventional α-Ω effects. When varying the disk parameters we find an optimal resistivity that facilitates magnetic amplification, whose magnetic Reynolds number, ℛ_m ≲ 10, is substantially smaller than in local simulations. Unlike local simulations, we find an optimal cooling rate and the existence of global oscillating dynamo modes. The nonlinear saturation of the dynamo puts the disk in a strongly magnetized turbulent state on the margins of the effective range of GI. In our simulations, the accretion power eventually exceeds the threshold required by local thermal balance against cooling, leaving the long-term nonlinear outcome of the GI dynamo uncertain.